To go all Val Kilmer on my gentle readers, when a woman sleeps with a hundred men, there’s something rotten in Denver. School teachers are taught to watch for students who have an age-inappropriate interest in sexual activity; it is often a sign of molestation. Girls who were molested often try to take some control of their sexuality by being promiscuous. Thus, normalisation of underage promiscuity covers us the signs of molestation and tells children that it’s okay to behave in ways usually associated only with severe psychological damage. (Certainly, the lack of meaningful consent is also a huge issue – we wouldn’t let fourteen-year-olds make binding contracts to purchase a home – but today is Val Kilmer Day here at The Fog of Law.)

Unfortunately, if Kaitlyn Hunt had been molested, such would be used as a mitigating element in her criminal trial, not an additional reason to oppose adults having sex with children. People who have serious issues act out in ways that are unhealthy (e.g. drug use or dropping out of school) and also in ways that perpetrate their own hurt on a new generation (e.g. abuse, molestation). We shouldn’t tell them that their ways of acting out or harming others are normal, healthy expressions of human desire: we should be pointing out that those symptoms of a problem are also deeply sick in themselves.

2 responses to “In which I go all Val Kilmer on Stacy McCain”

You have an excellent point: If sexual promiscuity becomes the accepted norm, then the identification of abnormal behavior becomes problematic. This enables weirdos to flourish undetected, as they are provided camouflage by the surrounding weirdness